PUSSY
by Howard Jacobson
(Cape, £12.99)

It was a clear blue day in January when I and thousands of other women gathered in cities around the world for the Women’s March and adorned on many of the placards was the word pussy: a particularly memorable banner held aloft outside the American embassy read: “Pussies against patriarchy”.

Here were some powerful attempts to reclaim the word after the tapes that had leaked of Donald Trump declaring that when you’re a star you can do anything you want, including “grab them by the pussy”, a conversation Trump carelessly dismissed as “locker room banter”.

The novel tells the story of the lazy, vain, and obtuse Prince Fracassus, who lives within the Palace of Golden Gate and has hair “the colour of lemon custard”

Since then, the word – like several words to describe vaginas over the years – has become a source of contention. Not long after the Women’s March, Trump demonstrated further his scorn of women through reinstating the Global Gag Rule curtailing abortion rights worldwide.

A few months later I hold in my hand a novel called, yes, really – Pussy, the first fictional satire of Trump by a leading writer.

“A white heat of rage and disbelief”: Howard Jacobson says he wrote ‘Pussy’ in a rage in the aftermath of Trump’s victory

The Booker Prize winning author Howard Jacobson turns his razor-sharp wit and satirical skills to American politics in a book first begun the night that news of the election victory filtered in, and written in “a white heat of rage and disbelief” in the aftermath of Trump’s victory.

Jacobson is the author of fifteen novels and five works of non-fiction most recently Shylock is My Name, his version of The Merchant of Venice in the Hogarth Shakespeare series – his keen eye for societal and political follies is apparent in all. The striking cover bears an image of Trump wearing a nappy and clutching a naked blonde doll of a woman – a fitting image encompassing the infantalised and misogynist leader.

At its best, the book brilliantly portrays a world in which language and the complexity of ideas that language can convey has been devalued

Magnificently illustrated by Chris Riddell (including an illustration of a pussycat curled above the protagonist), the novel tells the story of the lazy, vain, and obtuse Prince Fracassus, heir presumptive to the Duchy of Origen, who lives within the Palace of Golden Gate, has hair “the colour of lemon custard”, and is a source of ‘fracas’ in both name and nature.

At its best, the book brilliantly portrays a world in which language and the complexity of ideas that language can convey has been devalued. The story begins when Professor Probius arrives at the palace to be interviewed for the position of tutor to Fracassus.

Professor Probius is a former head of Phonetics, “a university research programme looking into the importance of language to ethical thinking. The words we used and the way we expressed them, he argued, affected the thoughts we had and the actions we took”.

Thereafter, the novel hurtles breathlessly through a bildungsroman of the young Prince from “baby celebrity” to idling away his boyhood watching reality TV shows, to becoming a young man fantasizing about prostitutes and that he is the Roman Emperor Nero, leading up the moment he runs for election.

Chapter titles include those such as ‘In which Fracassus almost reads a book’ (this is one book that should be hand-delivered to Trump Tower), and ‘Fracassus discovers the price of freedom and tweets about it’ – the dumbing down of complex thought through social media is well satirised.

The protagonist lacks a “way with words” but Jacobson’s way with words pervades this flawed but fascinating book. This may be the first fictional attempt to grapple with Trump but there are surely more to follow – indeed, it has been announced that Salman Rushdie’s forthcoming novel The Golden House is set against a panorama of American politics and features “a ruthlessly ambitious, narcissistic, media-savvy villain sporting make-up and coloured hair”.

Now is the time for testing how fiction can tackle our turbulent political era and be a purveyor of unpalatable truths.

iNews

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